Saint of Sunset
In my car, high on a hill, I watched the sunset, its colors wheeling like an octopus across the sky, a dab of this, a dab of that, gold-flecked lace melting to a scarlet that dwindled to mauve, evening’s curtain fluttering down.
I asked, who is the saint of sunset?
It was the hour of unanswered questions.
Another time, I sat in my car high above the traffic’s arias. It was the hour of bird swope and Door Dash, wallowing busses waiting for the lights to change, and I remembered the stars of my childhood, the ones no longer seen today in suburban skies.
My father would take a blanket out to the lawn and, lying down together, he’d explain to me what’s story, what’s science, and how the gods of the sky pose only at night.
I did not question this.
Now that I’m old, I know something of the night. Now that I’m old, I know questions go unanswered, mistakes can be beautiful, like the moon’s broken tooth poking through the lip of a cloud. Pieces don’t have to fit.
After breakfast, I check on my lilies, flip off their hanging heads with the tip of my cane, their flowers, orange mush by now, so willingly dead they give me courage.
Now is the hour to put away history’s clutter, to understand that even ghosts will disappoint.
It is the hour to accept the lonely bed, to lie in it like a stone effigy, one hand clasped to the other.
The world drains away to night. I wait for this and close my eyes. Different shades of black twirling, shifting slabs, some with glitter, a sprinkling of gold, and deepening outward, a going-away light both invitation and finale. It takes me there,
where I want to go. I pray to it, and it opens its doors and I step through to sleep, a house stripped of all but what I’ll put in it when I dream.
How to Get Rid of a Ghost
First you give it a name. There are 26 letters to choose from, so begin with any one you want. This is your ghost and you get to name it.
Next, turn it into a clown by looking at its face and realizing, maybe for the first time, it’s rather silly looking, stupid, in fact, and that the nose has always been a problem,
the mouth a deep character flaw. So gaud it up, apply the large clown ears, the red-ball nose, and soon you’ll laugh at its ugliness, its helplessness and lack of danger.
Voices, I grant you, are difficult to get rid of because they can live in your head and mingle with yours. But even this can be fixed by telling yourself a simple truth:
I am ___________, and say your name, in your voice, as many times as you wish, all day if you want, and with each breath, you will begin to realize that, unlike the ghost,
you are not a bag of gas, some nonsubstance that stalks the air like bad breath loitering inside the doorway of your bedroom. No, you are __________, and the ghost can never
say your name again because, unlike it, you are truly visible, believable, and the world knows this. Still, ghosts can be stubborn, and because they are impervious to knives,
which go right through them, you may wonder, Is it really gone? It’s OK to think this__________, as you are intelligent, curious and lean toward kindness. Self-doubt is allowed, especially
at dusk when the light shifts and ghosts are known to slip back in. If this happens to you, go to the mirror and say your name: ____________. Say it again: __________.
And if a clown face appears behind you, turn around and kick it in the nuts.
Good and Plenty
During that masterpiece of will, A Man for All Seasons, my father shuffled up the dark aisle to satisfy his bladder
and my sweet tooth. He was gone ages; heads would roll. When he returned, he handed me a box of crappy Snow Caps,
then whispered, “They’re all out of Fine and Dandy.” Tiny pastel toes rattling in a box: Good and Plenty,
or, in Tonto talk, Plenty Good for pure sugar and a mild laxative. What a dump. That’s Bette Davis, Daddy’s favorite.
Mom liked Robert Taylor. I like Richard Burton, how he puked out murder like it has six syllables. My sister liked real licorice,
the kind that looks like cut up tires and comes in waxy bags. They’re all dead now. Maybe Heaven’s a huge screen,
something like the sky with John Wayne flying through it. Maybe God is Orson Welles punching tickets for the midnight show.
Who sat behind that candy counter fly-deep with dust and sold Daddy those Snow Caps? Some pimpled twit? Some dipso
widow with finned blue hair? Do they remember him, the man who lumbered up then lumbered down then whispered in my unforgiving
ear that catastrophe of syllables? I remember Susannah York taking down Paul Scofield’s head, and, though this is off- screen, I also see her press it to her heart.
The Virgin Refuses
Tiepolo, famous for his cream-puff thighs and frescoed see-through flesh, when painting the Virgin also painted the usual suspects: supplicating angel,
flying naked babies, and in my favorite by him (c. 1768), a haloed bird surfing a nozzle of light. Here, he painted a Virgin dressed in dull blue,
a thinking woman’s habit. She seems unimpressed by the big-ass angel kissing the tiles, as he and the others have interrupted her reading
and what looks like the laundry. The impatient angle of her wrist suggests she guards her time more closely than her hymen. What if she refused, this Virgin,
tired of angels chesting their way in like gangsters with a “soytin request”? What if her knowledge, like the hem of her dress, was already muddied, and
she knew the half-life of miracles was short if not an outright joke? Unlike the Italians, who liked their Virgin well-oiled and framed,
the English kept theirs tidy in a Book of Hours, those luscious calendars well-heeled ladies kept inside their chambers. Did they mark the days
the way I used to mark the ones I didn’t bleed, then check off the ones I did and, after sex claimed me, drew a heart or smiley face to mark the fucking?
History is so quiet on so many things.
In 1898, Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Virgin sits alone in a room somewhere in Palestine. Dressed in a desert-colored robe, ready for bed, all of 13, she looks like
a runaway, and downright skeptical. The angel is a yellow pole, a neon throb that lights her face. In 2000, John Collier presents a more familiar scene:
suburban, the dove alighting on the rafter of an A-frame house. His angel has a Beatles haircut. And his Virgin? Ninth grader, I’d say,
dressed in Catholic-schoolgirl blue and wearing sloppy saddle shoes. I want the book she’s holding to be a college catalogue, but I’m sure it’s not.
In 1961, the new fall faces appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle. September meant junior high, another hairstyle, and it was easy
to forget the ones who’d disappeared– Peggy and Deb, maybe others, sent to Miami, or to an aunt, or to that building with its high stone
windows. We didn’t talk about it. Back then, our angel was the one Shelley Fabares sang to, a Johnny Angel, safe in his 45. But Deb and Peggy—
black bras beneath pale blouses, nipples pebbled like a rosary, bouffant hair, white lipstick? Someone came for them, too, a dreamboat in the back seat
of a car, or musty rec room, or a softball field at night. They brought promises, or a dare, perhaps a fist—does it matter? No one will paint their pain,
the needle of their labors stuck in that groove of no return: Will you still love me tomorrow? Trite isn’t it? Trite but true.
And Deb’s and Peggy’s bastards? They’d be close to 60 now.
Sibbie O’Sullivan enjoys writing in many genres, including poetry, fiction and drama. Her poems have appeared in many publications, among them West Branch; The Laurel Review; Nimrod; Sou’Wester; and Zone 3. She is the recipient of the ArtScape Literary Arts Award for Fiction from the City of Baltimore, and has collaborated with the late Ruth Maleczech, co-founder of Mabou Mines Theatre Company of New York, as well as actor Sarah Pleydell for dramatic performances of her poetry and plays. The recipient of three grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, O’Sullivan continues to explore the boundaries of nonfiction. Her memoir, My Private Lennon: Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed, was published in 2020 by Mad Creek Books. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in The Washington Post. She lives in Wheaton, MD.